How odd, the prime factors of 2018 yield two Jesus related events, separated by over a thousand years that are mysteriously tied to his birthplace. Evidently, the Star of Bethlehem marked the beginning, 1009 marked the middle, and 2018 is the end! Repent, the rapture is upon us! Better buckle up non-gender specific bovine control officers (cowboys) 2018 is going to be rough.

Just how rough you ask? Imagine hordes of underachieving and mostly useless bureaucrats forced to take an impromptu paid holiday1 because even more useless legislators cannot agree on how to spend other people’s money. Let’s hope the government stays shutdown down until the imminent rapture renders it redundant.

My calculations cannot pinpoint the exact time and date of the rapture. My guess would be the first2blood moon of the year, January 31, 2018. Get your affairs in order and divest yourself of your worldly bitcoins.3 Use the address encoded in the QR graphic of this blog.

Hey: If you think this micro-epiphany is batshit crazytake a look at this!It’s getting to the point where it’s no longer possible to be satirical because somewhere on the intertubes you’ll find true believers that go way beyond satire.

None of the furiously furloughed will miss a single damn paycheck. Where can I get a job that pays me to sit on my ass and whine about whatever the idiot talking point of the day is?↩

2018 has two total lunar – blood moon – eclipses. If we’re not raptured on January 31st wait until July 27th↩

Sky Fairy consultants, also known as prophets, have high overhead and need substantial donations to maintain their close connections with the divine.↩

Here we go again; literal lunatics are, for the zillionth time, announcing the end of the world. What’s going to do us in this time? Would you believe the next four lunar eclipses? Starting tonight, an unusual, but not rare, sequence of four lunar eclipses begins. Some religious loons are claiming this so-called eclipse tetrad is a sign of the end times. Oh, if it were only so. Imagine a world cleansed of imbeciles! Unfortunately, as Fred Espenak notes on his highly regarded eclipse pages, there is nothing unusual about this sequence of eclipses. In the last five thousand years we’ve had 142 eclipse tetrads. That’s about one world ending every thirty-five years. Look around people; we’re still here.

It astounds me that there is still a market for such nonsense. Astrology, and that’s all this blood moon rubbish is, has been completely, totally, absolutely and utterly debunked. On this the science really is settled! But, when have we ever let science get in the way of a good marketing opportunity, and world endings are well — world ending — sales opportunities. Get your end times before they’re gone! Running astronomical scams is easy because large swaths of the public cannot reliably answer basic questions like: does the Sun go around the Earth? Maintaining such levels of ignorance must be exhausting.

You might want to pull your head out of your blood moron ass long enough to observe tonight’s total lunar eclipse. It starts around midnight here in St. Louis with totality commencing around 2:00 am. I’ll be out there, St. Louis weather permitting, shooting eclipse tracks. With proper framing eclipse tracks make neat pictures. If what I have in mind pans out it will constitute my next post.